Mexican Cuisine

as outlined by Karen Hursh Graber a Mexican Cuisine Historian and Writer

Main Ingredients
1. Corn is the traditional staple grain.
2. Rice is the next most prolific ingredient
3. These two ingredients are then supplemented with beans
4. chocolate
5. avocado
6. tomatoInfluences on Mexican Cuisine
When the Spanish arrived in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), they found that the people’s diet consisted largely of corn-based dishes with chiles and herbs, usually complemented with beans and tomatoes. The Spanish eventually combined their imported diet of rice, beef, pork, chicken, wine, garlic and onions with the native indigenous foods of pre-Columbian Mexico, including chocolate, maize, huitlacoche, tomato, vanilla, avocado, guava, papaya, sapote, mamey, pineapple, soursop, jicama, chile pepper, beans, squash, sweet potato, peanut, achiote, turkey and a local variety of fish.

imagine having feet and claws. that would be so helpful in soccer matches!

Interesting Note (not on the test)
In Pueblos or villages, there are also more exotic dishes, cooked in the Aztec or Mayan style (known as comida prehispánica) with ingredients ranging from iguana to rattlesnake, deer, spider monkey, grasshoppers, ant eggs, and other kinds of insects.

Mexican Food today
“Tex-Mex” is a term used to describe a regional American cuisine that blends food products available in the United States and the culinary creations of Mexican-Americans influenced by the cuisines of Mexico. The cuisine has spread from border states such as Texas and those in the Southwestern United States to the rest of the country. In some places, particularly outside of Texas, “Tex-Mex” is used to describe a localized version of Mexican cuisine. It is common for all of these foods to be referred to as “Mexican food” in Texas, parts of the United States, and some other countries. In other ways it is Southern cooking using the commodities from Mexican culture. In many parts of the U.S. outside Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the term is synonymous with Southwestern cuisine.[1][2][3] Two such foods include the taco and the burrito.